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#21
Texrat, I'm not following you. N900 "monetization" is about users and (mostly application) developers. They are actually not that affected by any of the components requested to be opened, specially not in the short term.

Maemo 5 has an API to be exploited by app developers. Now with Qt 4.7 and Web Runtime there is more to exploit and point towards MeeGo, while still developing with the N900 as primary platform.

None of this has to do with opening platform components that, for Maemo 5, are considered stable now.
 
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#22
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Texrat, I'm not following you. N900 "monetization" is about users and (mostly application) developers. They are actually not that affected by any of the components requested to be opened, specially not in the short term.

Maemo 5 has an API to be exploited by app developers. Now with Qt 4.7 and Web Runtime there is more to exploit and point towards MeeGo, while still developing with the N900 as primary platform.

None of this has to do with opening platform components that, for Maemo 5, are considered stable now.
My point goes back to the reason many binary blobs stay closed: they are revenue drivers due to IP.

Once monetization is no longer a factor (i.e., technology has moved on) then I would hope there would be a natural process to by default begin opening previously closed bits.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something basic here. It's certainly possible.
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Last edited by Texrat; 2010-08-10 at 23:49.
 

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#23
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Texrat, I'm not following you. N900 "monetization" is about users and (mostly application) developers. They are actually not that affected by any of the components requested to be opened, specially not in the short term.

Maemo 5 has an API to be exploited by app developers. Now with Qt 4.7 and Web Runtime there is more to exploit and point towards MeeGo, while still developing with the N900 as primary platform.

None of this has to do with opening platform components that, for Maemo 5, are considered stable now.
Well, for a start there's plenty of WONTFIX bugs and wanted features in the closed components on the N900. If they were opened, some of us potential developers (I include myself) would have been (a) motivated at fixing those, to "scratch our own itches", (b) as a consequence develop more familiarity with the platform and so tip the balance further towards choosing it for serious developing, and (c) maybe even make the platform better.

It's a big decision, which platform(s) to develop for, because it takes so much time to learn how to do really interesting things well on each of them, and we are not at the stage were smartphone apps are easily cross-platform. Qt and Web Runtime are nice UI sugar. Useful, interesting, commercially sensible, but only part of what makes the most interesting apps and mods. The other parts are under the hood somewhere, and the APIs available are not enough, especially for interesting mods, bugfixes and performance enhancements.
 

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#24
Sorry, maybe it wasn't clear in that last post what I see as the relationship to monetization for Nokia.

The relationship is that some skilled developers will develop interest and familiarity with the platform if they're able to do what they personally want with it first... and then, they're more likely to choose to leverage that familiarity for app development with broader appeal, maybe commercial, maybe not - but part of the app catalogue either way.

Something like that also applies to development groups too. If they have an idea they want to implement, their choice depends on which platform they can implement it on first. For apps that use features every smartphone has, Qt etc. are attractive options. But those are the sort of apps which can be ported easily to all platforms

For apps that do more innovative things that might distinguish the Nokia platforms (or whichever the developer chooses), deeper access to the system's internals is an advantage. (It's a matter of good software engineering and working with others to make sure that isn't abused.)
 

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#25
In short, the MeeGo Devices team wants to focus the investment on open source collaboration, innovation and monetization around Qt and MeeGo. Ths is where our platform development is heading to.

Opening components is not a trivial task if you want things done the right way. Discussions like this one focus on the re-licensing, which is actually one of the simplest steps. Preparing the code of a long lived binary blog for publishing, documenting, offering support, dealing with contributions and producing new releases is where the diff of work relies, and it's a significant diff.

Nokia is opening this year the development of dozens of platform components around Qt and MeeGo. This is the direction where the investment is being done.
 
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#26
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Opening components is not a trivial task if you want things done the right way. Discussions like this one focus on the re-licensing, which is actually one of the simplest steps.
Then do this. BME on N810 has a simple bug that prevents charging an old battery while the system is running. Just give us a tarball of the source used to build BME. No documentation, no support, no distribution of fixed version by Nokia (heavens forbid that Nokia will fix a bug).

It is very simple (you just said it), and it will go a long way toward generating some goodwill, and some belief that the next MeeGo device will not be DOA, as its predecessors were, as far as Nokia is concerned.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3144
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6206
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#27
Not to mention GPS on N810, which maybe works sanely once a month in my experience. Stskeeps had me open a new bug according to some form for it a number of months ago, which just got closed as DUPLICATE (to a WONTFIX) so basically a waste of time.
 

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#28
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
I(...)MeeGo(...)MeeGo(...)MeeGo(...).
This is a thread about licensing change requests for Maemo 5 components. I think jjx put it best, so it doesn't make sense for me to repeat his points. Texrat also made reasonable points.

The whole point is to open up Maemo 5 components. Let me drive that point home one more time: Maemo 5.
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#29
Originally Posted by Tomaszd View Post
The whole point is to open up Maemo 5 components. Let me drive that point home one more time: Maemo 5.
And maemo 4, please.
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#30
Originally Posted by Matan View Post
It is very simple (you just said it), and it will go a long way toward generating some goodwill
And it will not happen.

Originally Posted by Matan View Post
and some belief that the next MeeGo device will not be DOA, as its predecessors were, as far as Nokia is concerned.
fool me once....
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